Through the Fire
by Onyx17
Summary: In life, sometimes the reward is far greater than the risk...


**Prompt: **Through the Fire

_Transformers (c) Hasbro_

Blue optics narrowed in concentration as they contemplated the pathway in front of them. Unstable, to say the least; she could practically hear the foundations crumbling beneath the weight of the structure. Had any other bot been present, she knew they would have told her how it was a pointless, not to mention suicidal, task. Deep within her processor, she knew this was probably true.

Venting a deep sigh through her intakes, she ran another thermal scan of the building. After less than a klik, the same red light flickered into life, indicating the undeniable presence of a sentient life-form. Optics flashing in determination, she transformed and sped down the large cavern, leaving a trail a dust in her wake.

She could feel the vibrations of cave walls collapsing beneath her tires and the various pieces of rock debris grazing her roof. Ignoring the warnings flashing on her CPU, she powered onwards, screeching around a corner. She revved in discomfort as she felt a piece of rock cut into her side door. Still undeterred, she kept her speed constant; only allowing her pace to slow as she approached her destination. Carefully skidding to a stop, she shifted back into her robot-mode. Her optics swept over the immediate area, taking in the steadily crumbling ground with an increasing sense of urgency.

'They have to be somewhere around here...' she thought to herself, keeping her scanners powered up and one optic focussed on the tremulous floor. She hastily, but cautiously began to search the room, casting her optics over every space, under every shelf, and shoving aside whatever obstacle that hindered her search.

Heaving a frustrated growl, she hurled a particularly large crate over her shoulder, inwardly wincing as she felt, rather than heard, it collide with an unusually thin wall. As the sound of several more walls giving way filled her audios, she felt her spark clench in disappointment...not to mention guilt. Letting out a distraught noise, she hesitantly made her way towards the nearest exit.

The sound of crashing walls and shattering stone began to fill her audios before another noise suddenly cut into it. She froze. The noise was strange, but still somehow...familiar. Snapping her head up she quickly looked in the direction of it, finding herself looking towards the gaping hole that had been left by the crate. Next to the opening in a less than a klik, she switched off her thermal scanner to direct all extra energy into her head-lights. The hole was notably too small for her to enter fully, but large enough for her to stick her upper torso into.

She found herself looking directly into the brilliant, blue optics of a sparkling. She shuttered her own optics several times in disbelief. Then, letting them inspect the young bots condition she noticed that it was definitely low on energon, in need of several patch jobs, and completely terrified, but she was no medic. Not allowing herself to hesitate, she gently reached her hand in and around the small body. The sparking, clearly either too afraid or exhausted to struggle, merely chirped weakly in response.

"It's ok" Elita One murmured, gently stroking the little bots head, "You're safe now". The sparking gazed with wide-eyed wonder at the strange femme. A sudden lurch of the ground, followed by a chorus of rock-falls echoing from below them, cut short the tender moment. While the sparkling clicked in fear, burying its head into the crook of Elita's arm, the Female Autobot leader merely grinned.

"We're going to make it out" she stated confidently, "We've made it this far...nothing will stop us" It was as if she were informing the Decepticon construction itself of this fact.

Transforming with as much speed as she could muster and making sure the sparkling was situated safely in her back seat, she revved her engine with enough power to cause the ground beneath her tires to turn to gravel. No sooner had she disappeared around the corner, did the room's floor crumble away, soon followed by its supporting walls and ceilings.

Chromia frowned in concern as her com message to Elita continued to go unanswered. It wasn't like her commanding officer; normally she kept every possible communiqué open to all of her soldiers, not to mention answered every one of them. No matter how idiotic or repetitive they became.

It had been a fairly routine mission: infiltrate an abandoned Decepticon base, gather whatever energon or useful items they could find, get the slag out. Somewhere along the line (Chromia guessed it was when those guard drones had attacked) Elita had pulled her disappearing act. It wasn't until after they had retreated from the hazardous excuse for a tower and put a good five miles distance between them and it that her disappearance had been discovered.

The blue bot vented an annoyed sigh through her intakes, electing to ignore the growing mutterings of her teammates; all equally baffled and worried over their leader's mysterious absence. She then narrowed her optics as a faraway object flickered into view.

"Firestar, do you see that?" she muttered to the femme next to her. The search and rescue specialist had far better long range vision than she did.

The red femme stepped forward, optics narrowing slightly. "It's...pink" she stated. Chromia felt a sense of relief wash over her.

"Come on" she said, transforming as she did so. "The rest of you stay here" she ordered back to the group of femmes gathered behind them. Ignoring the rising protests, she sped off. Chromia was never one of the most patient femmes, which was the main reason she shuddered at the thought of someday having to take up Elita's command position.

"It's definitely Elita" Firestar stated, pulling up alongside Chromia who sighed in response.

"Thank Primus"

As the two femmes approached, they noticed the amount of dents, scratches and dust covering Elita's form. Doubtless, she just barely made it out of the tower before it collapsed. The pink car slowly pulled to a stop, as did the other two. The sound of mettle grooving over mettle clinked as the three transformed simultaneously.

"Where were you?" Chromia inquired, crossing her arms and frowning slightly. She knew Elita, so also knew that she would have had a damn good reason for risking her aft without any notice of where she was going, or bringing any backup. But that didn't mean Chromia couldn't be a little irritated over it. Firestar remained patiently silent as she approached her commander, inspecting the status of her injuries.

"I had to get something" Elita answered, sounding rather tired; but her optics had a certain excited twinkle to them. Chromia furrowed her optic ridges in confusion.

"What do y-"

"Elita" Firestar cut her off, "What is that in your arm?" Chromia noted the mixture of disbelief coupled with anticipation in her tone. The blue femme quickly made her way over, nearly falling back in shock upon seeing what was currently recharging in her commanders arm.

"Is that a...a sparkling?!" she questioned in astonishment, optics wide. Elita smiled, gently stroking the pink bots head.

"I picked up its presence in the building after running a thermal scan" she explained.

"You still run those?" Chromia interrupted incredulously. Typical that when everyone else had given up hope of finding any living sparkling, Elita defies all logic and finds not only a sparkling, but a femme! Elita gave her a crooked smile.

"You know how stubborn I am" she informed her. Chromia rolled her optics, but chuckled nonetheless.

"And why did you go alone?" Firestar asked, slightly irritated. Not unlike Ratchets temper over bots failing to get their routine checkups, Firestar's pet peeve was them going on dangerous missions without any backup. Though granted, she never hurled hard inanimate at their heads for failing to do so.

"The building was already coming down and I didn't want to risk anyone else's life on what could have been a suicidal mission" she mumbled meekly. Firestar gave a brief sigh in response. And of course, Elita had no spurs about risking her own life on a possibly suicidal mission.

Chromia looked into her old friend's face. Elita had many different sides; to her enemies she was fierce, powerful and coldly precise, to her comrades she was patient, caring, supportive, a true friend. But this, Chromia realised, was another side entirely. This..._maternal_ Elita was what she would have been had she ever had a sparkling....had there never been a war.

Chromia smirked slightly, "Well, at least she's a femme. The last thing we need is _another_ mech" she snickered, glancing down at the still recharging sparkling. "Has she got a designation?"

"Not that I know" was the response.

"Wait" Firestar suddenly stated, "There's something written under her foot" she indicated the area with her welder. Elita blinked. Firestar's keen observation never failed to amaze her.

"Hmm, let's see" she mumbled, gently nudging up the foot. Her blue optics flashed as she read the name inscribed in ancient Cybertronian lettering. She then grinned brightly. "Well I suppose that answers your question Chromia"

"Arcee eh?" the blue femme muttered, crouching slightly in order to properly make out the small letters.

"I like it" Firestar said, giving a small grin. Elita hummed in agreement. Chromia gave a light snort.

"Well, not the name I would have chosen, but whatever" she mumbled. With a click, Firestar stored the welder into her subspace.

"I suppose you'd have gone with something more along the lines of, 'Pink-Death' or 'Iron-Maiden'?" she asked sarcastically. Chromia gave her friend a glare. Elita chuckled, transforming and once again settling Arcee carefully into her back seat.

"Come on, we better get back before the rest worry themselves into deactivation" she said, not entirely humorously. There were one or two femmes that did tend to get a little too anxiety stricken at times.

"Yes ma'am" Firestar responded, transforming. Chromia grumbled before following.

As she started up her engine she felt Arcee stir, giving a small tired chirp. Elita inwardly smiled.

She knew that what she did was potentially fatal. That she could have easily taken a wrong turn, ended up at a dead end and have been crushed to death. She knew that the energy signal could have easily been something else, possibly even a Decepticon. She knew just how big of a risk that she took. But now she also knew that the reward was far greater than anything she could have imagined.

She felt the small femme slowly drift back into recharge.

It was, without a doubt, one of the most dumb, reckless and crazy things she had ever done. And she didn't regret a single bit of it.

**Author's Note: **_Just a little one-shot I came up with. I suppose it could be considered AU, but then again we never really hear about G1 Arcee's origins, so I guess this could have easily happened 8D And no, I don't know why she was in the Decepticon base in the first place :/ Let us use our imagination shall we? _

_I'll admit that I took some artistic licence with Firestar's personality; but what can I do? There's not exactly much to work with :B_


End file.
